The worldwide market for Production Machinery Automation is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.4% over the next five years, according to a new ARC Advisory Group study. The market was $18.0 billion in 2008 and is forecasted to be over $21.2 billion in 2013.

"Increasingly more machinery applications are moving to much higher speeds of operation as well as providing more capability to reduce changeover time. Production raw materials are becoming less consistent as recycled materials enter the market. The result is that machine builders need to consider a wider range of operation in the original design to accommodate changes," according to Research Director Sal Spada, the principal author of ARC's Production Machinery Automation Worldwide Outlook."

Looking at developing regions, ARC points out that while the demand for industrial production machinery is at a high rate, the demand is being met by a surge of regional machine builders in emerging markets. Domestic machine builders with a vertical specialization have an advantage that goes beyond machine performance issues. It is the greater understanding of the technical and cultural needs of the end user customer that are now emerging as competitive advantages to machine builders in these markets.